Tommy Tomlinson took a kibble-sized idea for a book and turned it into a doggone tearjerker

Right around the time he started working on a book about dogs, Tommy Tomlinson became a cat person — although not necessarily by choice.

“My mother-in-law came to live with us a few years ago and a cat came as part of the package deal,” says the 60-year-old Charlotte author, who hasn’t been a dog owner since his yellow Lab mix named Fred passed in 2015. “So we have decided that it’s probably not wise to introduce a dog to all this right now.”

But he’s certainly fantasized about having another dog, or two ... or 200.

Over the course of the three years Tomlinson spent following dogs, dog handlers and dog shows around the country while doing research on “Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show” — his second book, published by Simon & Schuster last week — he says he “fell in love with a thousand different dogs.”

“I’d go to a breed competition and I’d see 30 spectacular English setters — which are just beautiful dogs — and I wanted to take them all home. I’d take pictures and send them to (my wife) Alix and say, ‘Oh, we need one of these! We need one of these!’

“Yeah, I fell in love with so many dogs during that time, it’s ridiculous.”

Tomlinson, a former longtime reporter/columnist for The Charlotte Observer and current podcast host/columnist at WFAE (90.7 FM in Charlotte), spoke to the Observer on Tuesday about the unlikely way in which he settled on the idea for the book; the precarious methodology he used to select its two heroes; and the propensity for a dog’s death (including a critical one in “Dogland”) to make a human cry.

The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Q. In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, you mentioned that your editor helped you pick the idea for the book from a one-line summary out of a pile of ideas. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Sure. So after my first book came out (2019’s “The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America”), we started talking about a second one. This is very common in the book business. We were just batting around ideas. And the first two or three ideas that I pitched to the editor, he was lukewarm about.

At some point he said, “Why don’t you just send me all your ideas?” I said, “Dude, I’m not gonna send you all my ideas. Because I’ve got this huge idea file on my computer. I’ll just send you a chunk. I’ll send you a list.” So I went into my file, pulled out 20 ideas, and sent him those. And number 19 on that list, I think, was “Nobody’s done a great book about Westminster and somebody should.” That was all it said. When he called me back, he’s like, “OK, that’s the one.”

The first book, I agonized for months writing a long proposal, doing all this stuff. It took forever to pitch that book properly. This one sold on one line. Sometimes you get lucky.

Q. But did you also panic a little?

I knew that it was going to be very different than the first book. The first book was a memoir so I knew my story going in. This was something I knew very little if any about. I mean, I’d watched “Best in Show” like everybody else and had watched dog shows on TV. But I didn’t know anybody in that world. I didn’t know any of the nuance and details about how it worked.

But as a journalist, I’m used to diving into unfamiliar situations — getting on the ground and navigating from there. So I was nervous about doing it, certainly, but I figured once I got there, I could sort things out. And the great thing about a book is that you have the luxury of time. I had some time to figure out what I was doing.

Q. You’ve said it took three years. Did you have a sense it would take that long when you started?

I think I probably could have written it faster if I wasn’t doing other things. I have a full-time job at WFAE. I do a newsletter. I do other stuff. And the one thing that did delay it — besides my own struggles in writing it — was I started right in the beginning of 2020; I went to the Westminster Dog Show in February of 2020, and about three weeks after that is when COVID hit.

So for months, there were no dog shows anywhere. Then when they returned, they were only in places that had had loose COVID restrictions like Florida. Otherwise, for most of 2020, there just wasn’t much going on. I think that turned out to be a blessing for me, because instead of having to dive in and stumble around dog shows for months, I was able to take a little break from that and do the research and reading that I needed to do to get a little bit better footing for when I actually went back out on the road.

Q. Let’s talk about the book’s main characters (the champion show dog Striker, a Samoyed, and his handler Laura King). How did you settle on them?

I met them in 2021, early on, I think. I went through a long speed-dating/vetting process. I knew that I wanted a dog handler and a dog to be the narrative thread that went through the book, and I needed the dog to be a really good dog. Obviously, I didn’t know if it was going to win Westminster, but I wanted it to have a shot. So that narrowed the field considerably.

When I figured out 10 or 12 dog handler pairings that I thought would be good, I went out and started talking to all those folks. Some of them just weren’t interested in me at all. Others were a little wary of outsiders, because probably of “Best in Show” — and because also I think people in any kind of subculture or bubble are worried that people are going to come in from outside and make fun of them. There were also a couple who I thought were really interesting, but they were either super busy and just didn’t have the kind of time I needed, or we just weren’t a great fit.

Laura’s great advantage, for me, is that she could see it from the inside and the outside. She’d been in that world for many years, and she loves dogs. She loves dog shows. But she also has the ability to stand outside the bubble a little bit and see some of the absurdities for what they are and laugh at them a little bit. That was the kind of person I needed to be my guide through this world.

Q. Well, I don’t want to spoil the ending for people, but did you think — from a storytelling perspective — that Striker and Laura falling just short would be better for the book, or that winning would be better?

Honestly I didn’t really think about that much. What I sweated over was whether he was going to make it to the final round. Because if he had lost at the breed round, and his show was over two hours into it, then I would have had to re-calibrate probably.

But as he advanced, I thought, OK, no matter how this turns out, it’s going to be good for me. If he wins, fantastic. If he loses ... you know, in sports-writing, they always say sometimes it’s better to go to the losers’ locker room. It’s more interesting. So I thought once he got to the final round — which I guess is a bit of a spoiler itself — no matter how that turned out, I was going to be in pretty good shape.

Q. Another minor spoiler: About two-thirds of the way through the book, you write an interlude about your old dog Fred. I’m not embarrassed to admit that it made me cry.

I figured that would be part of the reaction. I mean, dogs make people laugh, and cry, and all those things. I wanted the book to do the same thing.

Q. I actually read it on a flight to the West Coast, and then on the way back the guy I was traveling with read it. He cried at the same part, and turned to me and said, “That’s the reason I don’t get a dog, because I can’t deal with that.”

You know, my mom had a couple of pets when she was young. After they died, she decided that she couldn’t have another pet because she didn’t want to experience that again.

People grieve more intensely sometimes for a dog or another pet than they do for the human beings in their lives. There are lots of reasons for that, and it’s not a case of loving the pet more. The relationship with a pet is usually less complicated than it is with another human being. ... It also sort of reverses the natural process, in that parents usually die before their children; but when you have a pet and it becomes a child — at least by proxy — when you take that on, part of the deal is they’re probably going to die before you.

That can become very, very difficult to handle for people, and with good reason. It can be a really intense moment when a dog or another pet dies. So yeah, I think some people, rightly so, look at that and go, “I don’t want to deal with that.”

Q. But you think you could do it again?

Yes. I mean, we had a dog for almost 15 years. Very sad when he died. Cried over and over. But I would do that a million more times. I would take that pain over and over again to have the joy that we had with him.

Q. What was the most surprising thing that you learned while writing the book?

I didn’t realize these dogs get chosen so early for this life. These show dogs, these purebreds, when they’re puppies, the breeder comes and looks over a litter — at maybe six weeks old — and chooses the puppies they think have a chance to become champion show dogs. Those dogs are called “show-quality.”

The dogs that don’t quite measure up are called “pet-quality.” Which in this world is a little bit of a dig. You know, “Oh, that’s just a ‘pet-quality’ dog.” And those dogs are sold to families and become pets their whole lives.

But these other dogs, from the time they’re very young, lead a really different life than an average dog leads. They’re trained and they eat differently, they get all this training for the shows, they’re groomed for hours a day. It’s just a very different life. I didn’t realize that it started so early.

Q. One of the things that surprised me the most was the fact that Westminster’s winner doesn’t really win anything.

Well, they get a huge ribbon or two. They get a pewter trophy. But yeah, there is a patrician air to Westminster that “we’re above such things as prize money.” It’s not like horse breeding, horse racing, or horse shows. There’s not nearly the money involved.

Q. The central question of the book is “Are those dogs happy?” It made me think about the dog from “Up” — the one who talks using a collar that translates his thoughts into speech. Will we ever understand what dogs are really thinking?

You know, there was this Bud Light commercial where this guy suddenly discovers that he can hear his dog talk. And all the dog says is “Sausages. Sausages. Sausages.” I’m a little afraid that if we could learn how dogs think, that would be the conversation. … But I think certainly we have made strides, and one of the things scientists have figured out about this idea of happiness is that dogs do feel some sort of happiness — pleasure, or real, actual emotional lift — when they see us. There’s one study that showed that when dogs and humans lock eyes, they both get a dose of oxytocin, the sort of pleasure enzyme.

So I think there is some sense that we have a better understanding now of what dogs think and feel. Whether that can ever be translated in a way that we can understand what their emotions are and what they’re trying to tell us, that’s difficult. But in some ways, I think it’s more interesting that we can’t.

Q. Just generally speaking, has this experience made you a true fan of dog shows? Like, will you keep watching them?

Yeah, I’ll keep watching for sure. Westminster is on in about two weeks, and I’ll definitely watch that — because now I know some people in that world. There’s some people I’ll be rooting for. But also, I have gained a great appreciation for the love that people have for dogs inside the dog-show world. In one sense, certainly they’re commodities. For handlers, this is their job. They’re paid to train dogs well. To shuttle them in and out of the ring. Sometimes they don’t even know the dogs very well that they’re working with. It’s a profession.

But I think on some level with some dogs — and this was certainly the case with Laura and Striker — they make a lot deeper connection. And that’s the thing that we’re always looking for in life, right? No matter what we do, or what kind of profession we’re in, many of the things we do every day are just administrative tasks, or things we have to get through because they’re part of our job. But every once in a while, something deeper happens. Something more profound, something more interesting, something that’s more memorable. And I think that’s what happens with these folks, too.

It’s interesting to try to look at that and see the people who are not just working their dogs well, but have made a deeper connection with them.

Q. Are you going to travel up to see Westminster in person?

Not this year because I’m doing book-tour stuff. But I do hope to go some in the future and hang out with some of my new friends and pet some dogs. I mean, what better thing is there than that?

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Tomlinson’s “Dogland” book tour will wind its way through the Charlotte area in May, with stops at the Hurt Hub in Davidson at 7 p.m. on Tuesday the 21st and at Park Road Books at 7 p.m. on Thursday the 23rd.